Technology, Adventure, Urban Living, Smart Finance

Flurries

Flurries of activity, things get done. Lately lucrative bank bonuses earned in exchange for opening new accounts has become very attractive. Giving away my personal information to big financial institutions. Running their respective gauntlets, adhering to the requirements and rules, and operating within the terms and conditions: Quite an awesome angle on extracting big bucks for simply playing a little game.

To me it isn’t all new. Signing up for credit cards—forfeiting a precious hard pull on my credit report, meeting minimum spends—it’s all just another kind of dance with the banks. Though this time it’s direct deposits and funding thresholds with respect to tricky time tables.

Neat as it is, it’s important to recognize the negatives. Downsides include generating 1099-INTs (paying interest on the bonuses received), rearranging direct deposit flows, and having to watch out for early termination and monthly cycle fees.

It’s also tax season! The various forms filter in, the income gets tabulated, free filing sites are identified, credits claimed. Similar to last April I’ve plans to take advantage of my refund by adding it to my tIRA. Realizing financial optimization. This is truly one of my favorite times of the year.

Further Flurries

Playing Battlefield 2 through the ReviveBF2 project, planning future travel and creating interesting and complete trip itineraries, tagging music files with accurate information and building my music and movie libraries. Interleaved activities filling blocks of free time, a bridge from meal to meal, from one day of work to the next.

None of these activities are very substantial. But assembled in concert—establishing a stable baseline for my lifestyle—they’re strong enablers of my core desires: Maxing out a Traditional IRA, saving up for a post-tax VTSAX brokerage account, and exploring some places of the US to which I’ve never been.

What else? Mostly I’ve been just cooking delicious food, drinking wine, spending time with my cats, reading blogs and books, and simply staying away from the outside wintry chill. This is my version of a happy home.